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Use An Excluder

Originally Posted by Chef Isaac

Is there any negative ramification on the queen of a cell builder if you shake in bulk bees?

Velbert gave some good tips. I would add one more.

When adding bees to a cell builder...before graft, not after...you should use a shaker box. This is nothing more than a wood bound excluder nailed to the bottom of a good hive body...no holes. Place on cell builder, and shake nurse bees from other colonies...off open brood. You never know when there may be a second or even third queen in your donor colony. If you fail to see her, your cell builder will be a failure.

So, Michael, this is just a way of making sure the queen isn't shook in? Something like that is used when making a package, too?

Sort of the same thing. Same principle, anyway. With a package, if you happen to get a queen, its not really a big deal. Loss of caged queen I would guess. With a cell builder it means disaster. Finding the queen doesn't insure that there wasn't a second queen.